Although Instagram later attempted to talk its way out of the scandal, many users weren't persuaded, and quit the site. Indeed, a report from analytics firm AppStats suggested that the number of daily active users of the site fell from 16.35 million in December to just 7.41 million after the controversy.

Today, AppStats is showing a monthly active user total of just under 47 million. However, the company's figures were always likely to be on the low side, as many users don't connect their Facebook and Instagram accounts.

And according to Instagram, that's only half the true total, with the company claiming 90 million on its site. It says users are uploading 40 million photos per day and making 8,500 likes and 1,000 comments per second.

Instagram claims these figures show an increase of ten percent in the number of monthly active users since a month ago - although, this, of course, was after the privacy scandal and no doubt represented a user was that was lower than beforehand.

"Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world," Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom tells AllThingsD. "With many of the product and internationalization improvements we've made, we've been excited to see these efforts resonate with users globally."